STL is not going to become a hub for any airline (Read how airlines are consolidating) and if the area gets rid of Fleming (At RCGA) who will take over? Another Slay? And it is not even remotely realistic to think that the city and county will merge. NO ONE from the county wants anything to do with the city’s taxe situation or schools.

STL needs to regroup. It needs to FIX what it has that is broken (almost everything) and stop going off chasing the latest dream. St. Louis Center, Ballpark Village, charter schools, Kiel, and on and on. We are not going to become a Top Ten airport again and we are not going to become the point of entry for all Chinese goods. There are still some great corporations headquartered in STL that have tremendous brain-power (AB, Emerson, Monsanto, Edward Jones). Get them involved - REALLY INVOLVED. Work on small projects that can be completed successfully because if you can’t successfully complete the small projects, you will never be successful with the bigger projects (e.g. Ballpark Village, etc.)

How about spreading grass seed on the “mud hole”?

Just more of the same old same old.

Can anyone REALLY not see what happened? Blame should be pointed in one direction. Centene hasn’t intended to pursue the Ballpark Village development since last year, but they let all involved parties chase their tails while they leveraged the myth of Ballpark Village to pursue other plans behind the scenes. Now the previously sought after property in Clayton is available, and they’ve ejected their tenant in an adjacent property they already own? Coincidence? Do you really think so?

Centene played a big game at the expense of the city of St. Louis, and in doing so guaranteed that Ballpark Village will not be ready for the ‘09 All-Star game.

Don’t think this is true? Wait and see..

The list of Downtown Developments that is to the right of today’s article, “Experts say downtown will struggle”, omitted another downtown project that has died. It is the $114 million redevelopment of Gentry’s Landing, which was to include a new condominium tower and renovation of the extremely ugly existing 29 story tower. The only work that has been done at Gentry’s Landing, that is visible from the exterior, is a hideous paint job at the ground level near the main entrance. The paint was applied over cracks and globs of caulk. What a mess. Of the eight Downtown Developments listed, only one has been completed, and another has been started, the other six were either canceled or have not been started yet. I believe there are at least another dozen announced projects that were omitted from the list, (as Gentry’s Landing was), that are also going nowhere.

Mayor Slay, you are a loser and so is Saint Louis. What a joke. Let’s see, Slay, after losing Centene, Macy’s and who knows what next, why don’t you set up a study, or a commission. I know Saint Louisans love studies followed by nothing, or maybe you can get hold of Dick Fleming and he can hire a psychic. Oh no! Way too fast. How about one of those blue-ribbon panels that can have some nobodies travel to Cleveland to see how they got the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame up and running.

Saint Louis is a has-been city that cannot get its Metro-Link right, its convention business, its public musicians policies, corporate business incentives, and on it goes. This city will never be even a second-tier city. While there was a time when Saint Louis hosted the World’s Fair and the Olympics and financed Charles Lindbergh, those days are long gone, and the attitude of the typical Saint Louisan is to talk about the good days over Ted Drewes frozen custard. It is a loser city headed by losers like Civic Progress. When was the last time we heard these guys do anything worthwhile?

As long as the city continues its stodgy practices and expectations (witness Conway’s comments about Centene), this city will continue its plunge headlong into irrelevance, where we will not even be a back-office stop any more but just a distribution regional center with a few casinos, littered with Dollar Stores and Wal-Marts.

Dear clearthinker #174: I hope you aren’t so naive that you believed the Gentry’s Landing redevelopment was ever going to get done. This was eminent domain abuse at its worst. The land there is owned by one party and a different party owns the building. The party that owned the building is well connected politically and the land owners are not. The building owner wanted to own the land because it makes his building worth more but they could not agree on price. So the City helped out the building owner and forced the land owner to sell the land to them. To pull off this crime the City & building owner concocted this fake redevelopment scheme to cover their asses. Now Gentry’s Landfill looks worse than before the condemnation but the City doesn’t care, they took care of their buddies. This is why we so desperately need a new administration.

To libertarian at heart: I believe you are on to something. Another story going around is that the Gentry’s Landing eminent domain was about bias against Italians. The owner of the building that used eminent domain to get the land is McCann, McCann’s lawyer is Smith, the Mayor’s name is Slay, notice, no names end in vowels. The owner of the ground that got served with an eminent domain notice is Seravalli, very Italian. It isn’t only the African American community that has a very good reason to vote against Mayor Slay in 2009, but also all the Italians who live in the Hill.

#5 Bob you are so right the democrats ruined the city of St.Louis.They ruin everything they touch…God help us all.

Chicago and especially Nashville have multi-multi-big buck people living there ,especially Nashville.Money to spend and it is worth it to see Nashville.Tennessee is one of the few states where people move by the 1000’s .You can still get a gorgeous house and the city won’t bomb out.

someone said earlier . . . “we were dupped”
really? were you
what did you expect?

maybe we can still sell the Blues to Saskatchewan.
I heard they are buyers considering the strength of their dollar.